Excellent rant, thanks! I didn't click on it in your first post, fearing it would be another anti-DST rant, and I didn't want to jack up my blood pressure so early in the morning.

One quirk he missed: Morocco observes British time throughout the year, switching between GMT and BST on the same dates, and they even have a Monday-through-Friday work week, despite Friday being the Muslim holy day. All this in order to facilitate doing business with Europe, of course... Except for one detail: during Ramadan, DST is suspended... And the start of Ramadan depends on an actual physical observation of the first waxing crescent, which isn't always predictable because weather can interfere with the observations.

“Starting this specified day, everybody in this country must get up one hour earlier than usual. You must all go to work an hour earlier, go out to lunch an hour earlier, go home an hour earlier, eat dinner an hour earlier and go to bed an hour earlier than you otherwise would. Regardless of what your schedule is, you must shift it by one hour. All schools must change their timetables to hold each lesson one hour earlier. All shops, restaurants et cetera must open an hour earlier and close an hour earlier than usual. This shall continue for seven months. Then, on this other specified day, you must all start doing everything one hour later, thus resuming your original schedules.”

How many people would accept that, and how many would tell the power-crazy, micromanaging dictator to go stick his head in a pig?

But tell people that they must adjust their clocks, and they will obediently do all of the above.

Rombobjörn wrote:But tell people that they must adjust their clocks, and they will obediently do all of the above.

...but they could adjust their clocks, and agree (with their employer) to come to work an hour later than what the clock says. This is not government mandating behavior, it's government mandating standards (which is part of its role). We decide when to do all the things we do, and often do shift our schedules around for our own reasons.

Jose

Order of the Sillies, Honoris Causam - bestowed by charlie_grumbles on NP 859 * OTTscar winner: Wordsmith - bestowed by yappobiscuts and the OTT on NP 1832 * Ecclesiastical Calendar of the Order of the Holy Contradiction * Please help addams if you can. She needs all of us.

Rombobjörn wrote:But tell people that they must adjust their clocks, and they will obediently do all of the above.

...but they could adjust their clocks, and agree (with their employer) to come to work an hour later than what the clock says. This is not government mandating behavior, it's government mandating standards (which is part of its role). We decide when to do all the things we do, and often do shift our schedules around for our own reasons.

Jose

That's rather disingenuous - the whole reason for imposing the clock changes is because of its effect on people's behaviour. It's easier for people to just live with the officially mandated mild jet-lag twice a year than to attempt to live an hour out of phase with everyone around them.

rmsgrey wrote:That's rather disingenuous - the whole reason for imposing the clock changes is because of its effect on people's behaviour.

But it's not a mandate, and that's pretty important. It's actually pretty easy to get out of, should you choose. Entire states do this sometimes.

But if you want to be able to choose to be in sync, somebody has to control the signal.

Jose

Order of the Sillies, Honoris Causam - bestowed by charlie_grumbles on NP 859 * OTTscar winner: Wordsmith - bestowed by yappobiscuts and the OTT on NP 1832 * Ecclesiastical Calendar of the Order of the Holy Contradiction * Please help addams if you can. She needs all of us.

Rombobjörn wrote:Imagine that a government would decree the following:

“Starting this specified day, everybody in this country must get up one hour earlier than usual. You must all go to work an hour earlier, go out to lunch an hour earlier, go home an hour earlier, blah blah blah blah

Imagine that a government would realize that a lot of people live according to schedules that follow a time standard, that is, according to clocks that are all kept synchronized; that during summer, the sun rises earlier and sets later; that half of the extra daylight time of summer days gets wasted, by people being woken up by the sun, but not having to go to work yet.

That going to work earlier in summer means that the extra daylight time becomes available *after* work, when people are able to use and enjoy it, rather than *before* work, when you cannot lose yourself in whatever activity you might choose to do, because you still have to get to work on time.

Imagine that a government were to decree that the clocks should be set ahead during summer, so that, with no other organizational hassle being required, everyone would benefit from this shift in schedules.

Does that sound awful? I really don't get Rombobjörn's "decree" thing -- "decree" sounds like people are being forced to suffer, while the whole point of DST is the exact opposite.

I've lived long enough to see plenty of protests, against wars, worker exploitation, pollution, abortion restrictions, the nuclear arms race, racism, etc... Somehow the tyranny of having to go to work earlier in summer than in winter, and being forced to spend more of their free daylight time after working hours than before, has never gotten people upset enough to mobilize any protests whatsoever.

Rombobjörn wrote:Imagine that a government would decree the following:

“Starting this specified day, everybody in this country must get up one hour earlier than usual. You must all go to work an hour earlier, go out to lunch an hour earlier, go home an hour earlier, blah blah blah blah

Imagine that a government would realize that a lot of people live according to schedules that follow a time standard, that is, according to clocks that are all kept synchronized; that during summer, the sun rises earlier and sets later; that half of the extra daylight time of summer days gets wasted, by people being woken up by the sun, but not having to go to work yet.

That going to work earlier in summer means that the extra daylight time becomes available *after* work, when people are able to use and enjoy it, rather than *before* work, when you cannot lose yourself in whatever activity you might choose to do, because you still have to get to work on time.

Imagine that a government were to decree that the clocks should be set ahead during summer, so that, with no other organizational hassle being required, everyone would benefit from this shift in schedules.

Does that sound awful? I really don't get Rombobjörn's "decree" thing -- "decree" sounds like people are being forced to suffer, while the whole point of DST is the exact opposite.

I've lived long enough to see plenty of protests, against wars, worker exploitation, pollution, abortion restrictions, the nuclear arms race, racism, etc... Somehow the tyranny of having to go to work earlier in summer than in winter, and being forced to spend more of their free daylight time after working hours than before, has never gotten people upset enough to mobilize any protests whatsoever.

Except on the Internet, anyway.

How about Daylight Time all year round? That going to work earlier in summer & winter means that the extra daylight time becomes available *after* work, when people are able to use and enjoy it, rather than *before* work, when you cannot lose yourself in whatever activity you might choose to do, because you still have to get to work on time.

Before anyone objects I'd like to point out that children are already going to school in the dark in the morning, and sadly when we all fall back/spring forward from/to daylight time some of them (and/or their parents) die/are maimed in traffic accidents caused by this idiotic ritual.

GlassHouses wrote:Imagine that a government would realize that a lot of people live according to schedules that follow a time standard, that is, according to clocks that are all kept synchronized; that during summer, the sun rises earlier and sets later; that half of the extra daylight time of summer days gets wasted, by people being woken up by the sun, but not having to go to work yet.

Where I live we get around six hours of daylight in the winter, and people who work normal office hours have to get up long before sunrise. In the summer we hardly get any night at all, and there's no need to save any daylight. Farther north from here there are cities north of the Arctic Circle. They get no daylight at all in the winter and no night in the summer. Being woken up by the sun doesn't work at these latitudes. Those who need darkness to be able to sleep have to keep their bedroom dark with blinds or curtains to get any sleep in the summer.

Jumping only one hour is utterly pointless to us. If we would try to synchronize our clocks with the sunrise, then we'd have to change them many hours back and forth, a little bit at a time, and by different amounts in different parts of the country. That would be downright ridiculous, as I hope most people can understand. We have to do the time jump ritual anyway, to synchronize our schedules with the rest of the EU, or whatever the government's current excuse is. Some people's schedules are even so unlucky that every March, just when the sun begins to rise around the time they have to get out of bed, then the "daylight saving" begins, and so their alarm clock starts ringing before dawn again.

GlassHouses wrote:[...] with no other organizational hassle being required [...]

The developers of PHP-FPM seem to have heard that log entries should include the timezone, so it writes the timezone in its logs. The political zone, that is, not the offset from UTC:

Any program that tries to collate those logs must look up the zone in the timezone database to get the offset, and even then it's still ambiguous for an hour once a year. But apart from that, yeah, no other hassle.

Except, that is, for the extra programming work I've had to do to ensure that various programs don't overwrite the file they wrote an hour earlier when the clock jumps backwards. But once the programming is done there's no other hassle.

Although, I have at times received meeting invitations sent from Outlook, that specified the timezone as UTC+01:00 along with a list of cities that were in UTC+02:00 at the time, leaving me to wonder which timezone the meeting time was actually given in. Sometimes there has been a notice included that the stated timezone doesn't take daylight saving into account. Gee, thanks for the warning, but that still doesn't tell me whether I should believe the offset or the list of cities. But once I've asked the sender personally what time the meeting will be, it doesn't cause any other organizational hassle.

Well, not quite. Some colleagues of mine were once preparing for a teleconference that was going to begin in 15 minutes, when they suddenly found out that they were 45 minutes late for the meeting. They were unaware that the USA had recently "sprung forward", and I bet the Yankees were equally unaware that the EU hadn't done its jump yet. I think it very likely that the meeting had been booked through Outlook. But except for that there's been no organizational hassle.

Well there was that evening when I went to the communal laundry room to take my clothes out of the washing machines, only to find the machines dead and the clothes soaked in water and detergent. Apparently the power was cut automatically to prevent people from running the machines at night, and nobody had adjusted the timer switch for the latest time jump. I had do take my clothes back dripping wet, leaving a trail of water through the corridors, and rinse them in the bathtub to get the detergent out, and I'll never again book the last evening block in the laundry room.

Rombobjörn wrote:Where I live we get around six hours of daylight in the winter, and people who work normal office hours have to get up long before sunrise. In the summer we hardly get any night at all, and there's no need to save any daylight. Farther north from here there are cities north of the Arctic Circle. They get no daylight at all in the winter and no night in the summer. Being woken up by the sun doesn't work at these latitudes. Those who need darkness to be able to sleep have to keep their bedroom dark with blinds or curtains to get any sleep in the summer.

Jumping only one hour is utterly pointless to us. If we would try to synchronize our clocks with the sunrise, then we'd have to change them many hours back and forth, a little bit at a time, and by different amounts in different parts of the country. That would be downright ridiculous, as I hope most people can understand. We have to do the time jump ritual anyway, to synchronize our schedules with the rest of the EU, [...]

And further south, the change in day length isn't as great so the need for DST is less. It's almost as though the EU's DST practice was optimised for a country that lay between, say, 50 and 60 degrees of latitude. Does the EU have such a member state?

Of interesting note, BTW:[quote=Wikipedia]British Summer Time was first established by the Summer Time Act 1916, after a campaign by builder William Willett. His original proposal was to move the clocks forward by 80 minutes, in 20-minute weekly steps on Sundays in April and by the reverse procedure in September. […][/quote]

That wouldn't be so bad nowadays, when many of us rely on computers that handle DST automagically as our primary timepiece. It would probably disrupt sleep patterns less. But back then every adjustment would have to be performed manually on every clock. Plus 20 minutes makes for an awkward UTC offset.

Regarding Daylight Saving Time, when the U.S. changed its dates for starting and ending DST to expand the amount of year covered, it incurred several billion dollars of system operator's time (some of which was mine), to get a return of $0.00 in saved electricity due to offset use of indoor lighting. It was obvious on the first day of implementation that there was no gain in energy savings. The change was never rolled back - not because of the effort being successful, but because reverting the change would double the wasted effort.

I'd personally support abolishing DST entirely; at least that would have the benefit of simplifying the jobs of our various systems operators and arguably would have a return on the effort invested up-front.

sonar1313 wrote:As for Daylight Savings Time, no, it really doesn't serve the purpose people thought it would, and it's become sort of arbitrary, and I don't give a damn at all because I like that the sun sets really late in the summer. As do lots of people, I expect.

Sure, but you can have "local time is roughly 1PM when Sun is highest in the sky" without changing time zones partly through the year. In the winter, since you're using all the available sunlight each day anyway, it may still make sense for it to be later in the day. (Best argument I've heard against it is that with "year-round DST" kids may need to be waiting for school buses in the dark in the morning, but even today that's still the case for the few darkest weeks around here, and there are arguments that the school day should be moved layer anyway…)

Massachusetts was talking about moving to UTC-4 year-round (effectively always DST with our current time zone) a couple years back, but like most logical legislative initiatives I don't think it went anywhere.

Move the office hour, move the school hour, don't move the clock. I have never seen an argument promoting DST madness that can't be solved by issuing 2 sets of opening hour / working hour while keeping the clock as-is. The best part is you can enjoy more fine-tune control by issuing 3 sets if you want.

GlassHouses wrote:*groan* I'll probably never live to see a year go by without hearing some badly-thought-out DST hating.

One day, I'm sure the DST-o-phobes will get their way, or even the one-time-zone-to-rule-them-all crazies, and then I can sit back and enjoy the spectacle of millions of people trying to negotiate summer hours with their employers so their long summer evenings remain intact; traveling to far away places and having no clue when the local restaurants open and close -- yeah, it was soooo convenient not to have to adjust your watch, but what good does it do you to know what time it is when you have no idea what schedule anyone is on? Or did you think we were all going to just start living on the same schedule, light-driven circadian rhythm be damned?

It all seems like a horrible dystopia.

Time on a spinning planet is messy. Time zones and DST are an imperfect but workable solution. Abolishing them because a few people just can't remember to change their clocks twice a year, or because of a few programmers who can't figure out how to deal with time, that would be insanity. (What kind of programmer can't figure out how to deal with time, anyway? Good God, what will you do when faced with an actual *difficult* problem?)

DST mandated by states does not make schedule checking any easier. Countries around the world don't trigger DST on the same day. So whenever one go to a foreign place with DST clock or communicate to people there remotely, one still has to look up the internet or some timezone database or the timezone code provided is garbage. So for your case of having meal in restaurant when traveled to far away places, the non-DST world is definitely better as I only need to check info for that restaurant once (and see if they have winter/summer opening hour different from which date to which date), while your DST world make me need to check twice (one for restaurant information, another for DST setting by the government there)

Let the noon be noon. Schedule may be adjusted according to when the sun rise but time itself should not. Time should follow when the sun get to the top. DST have not made schedule communication any easier. It makes schedule communication more error-prone.

billyswong wrote:Let the noon be noon. Schedule may be adjusted according to when the sun rise but time itself should not.

Is that any way to run a railroad?

billyswong wrote:Move the office hour, move the school hour, don't move the clock. I have never seen an argument promoting DST madness that can't be solved by issuing 2 sets of opening hour / working hour while keeping the clock as-is.

Problem is, everyone would have to issue two sets of opening/working hour... and they will become like unto standards. At least DST is a one* stop shop.

Jose*for a much smaller value of "one"

Order of the Sillies, Honoris Causam - bestowed by charlie_grumbles on NP 859 * OTTscar winner: Wordsmith - bestowed by yappobiscuts and the OTT on NP 1832 * Ecclesiastical Calendar of the Order of the Holy Contradiction * Please help addams if you can. She needs all of us.

billyswong wrote:Move the office hour, move the school hour, don't move the clock. I have never seen an argument promoting DST madness that can't be solved by issuing 2 sets of opening hour / working hour while keeping the clock as-is.

Problem is, everyone would have to issue two sets of opening/working hour... and they will become like unto standards. At least DST is a one* stop shop.

Jose*for a much smaller value of "one"

Well, in modern western culture, you have a bunch of opening hours anyway - and my local 24hr supermarket might not even notice...

billyswong wrote:Let the noon be noon. Schedule may be adjusted according to when the sun rise but time itself should not.

Is that any way to run a railroad?

billyswong wrote:Move the office hour, move the school hour, don't move the clock. I have never seen an argument promoting DST madness that can't be solved by issuing 2 sets of opening hour / working hour while keeping the clock as-is.

Problem is, everyone would have to issue two sets of opening/working hour... and they will become like unto standards. At least DST is a one* stop shop.

Jose*for a much smaller value of "one"

In where I born and live, there is no DST so schools issue summer timetable and winter timetable (and some don't). Yeah, each school move things a little bit differently, but I have never heard any of my schoolmates or friends wishing the government move the clock to reduce timetables into one.